This volume, edited by Tobie Openshaw and Dean Karalekas, will guide you on a multidisciplinary journey through Indigenous peoples’ centuries-old lore of “little people” in Taiwan and the Pacific. Learn about the Taiwan SaiSiyat people’s paSta’ay ritual, still held to this day to commemorate the koko ta’ay. Follow the distribution of the legends, interspersed with original stories by modern Indigenous authors. Explore the archaeological find of small-statured negrito remains in Taiwan, and delve into the most current research on the topic by linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and other specialists to unravel the mystery of what—or who—inspired these ancient legends.
Tobie Openshaw, Affiliated Research Fellow, Centre of Austronesian Studies, University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Tobie has engaged with the topic of the ta’ay alongside SaiSiyat elders for over a decade. He lectures on Indigenous issues and documentary filmmaking in Taipei.
Dean Karalekas, Ph.D. (2016), Affiliated Research Fellow, University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), has edited several academic books and is the author of Civil-Military Relations in Taiwan: Identity and Transformation (Emerald Publishing, 2018) and The Men in No Man's Land: A Journey Into Bir Tawil (2020).
Foreword
Sharing Legends of Short-Statured People across Space and Time
David Blundell
Acknowledgements Tobie Openshaw
List of Figures and Tables Acronyms Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Myth and Mystery
Tobie Openshaw
1 The Vanishing Dwarf Domas Ayang
2 Pre-Neolithic Populations as Inspiration for Taiwan’s Mythical Little People
A Survey of the Available Evidence
Paul Jen-kuei Li
3 Tracing Negritos and Their Paths in Ancient Taiwan
New Findings Raise More Questions
Hsiao-chun Hung, Hirofumi Matsumura, and Mike T. Carson
4 Do Formosanisms in Austronesian Languages Originate from a Substrate of Taiwan’s Earliest Inhabitants? Roger Blench
5 Negrito Populations of Insular and Peninsular Southeast Asia P. Bion Griffin
6 Ljeljeman and Her Short Friends Kereker Palakurulj
7 The Place of koko’ ta’ay among the Saisiyat People
The Origin of the Legend and Its Instantiation in the PaSta’ay
Liu Yu-ling
8 Ritual Tools, Ritual Songs, and the ta’ay
A Lexicon of the PaSta’ay
Lancini Jen-hao Cheng
9 A History of Research into the Little People
Finding Patterns in the Formosan Dwarf Legends
Liu Yu-ling
10 Makasino Lulyang Nomin
11 The Primordial Little People Tale-Type
Tracing Pacific Dwarf Myths throughout the Austronesian Expansion
Dean Karalekas
12 What Ancient Taiwanese Negritos Might Tell Us about Mystery Hominoids in Indonesia Gregory Forth
13 Walking with Dvorovoi
A History of European Imagery of Little People
Igor Sitnikov
Index
Academics, students, and informed readers with an interest in Taiwan, Indigenous studies, folklore, anthropology, ethnolinguistics, mythology, and the discovery of negrito remains in Taiwan.